August 02, 2009

• I love the comic in the second link. What makes a grand piano a grand piano, by the way? Is it just the large top that can be propped up at an angle?
• Well, judging from what I found on the intarwebs, a grand piano is heavy, loud, has expensive ivorys, and men love them: What do you get when you drop a grand piano down a mineshaft? A flat minor What do you get when you drop a grand piano on an army base? A flat major Why is an 11-foot concert grand better than a studio upright? Because it makes a much bigger kaboom when dropped over a cliff. What happened when a man fell in love with a grand piano? He said, “Darling, you've got lovely teeth.” Women are like pianos.....If they're not upright, they're grand!!!
• What a wonderful post! Sure would like to hear some of these beauties in action. Just knowing that this collection exists is oddly reassuring. Which did not stop me from laughing at BlueHorse's funnies... or at this which is right out of Northern Exposure, probably my fave show of all time (the first seasons, anyway).
• bernockle, an upright piano is shaped like a narrow rectangle and has the strings and hammers vertical. A grand piano is what you'd think of as a classic piano shape. A small one is a "baby grand," and a large one is a grand. See also
• The Hotel by the Sea In the hotel by the sea a man is playing the piano. The piano wants to be played like a pinball machine, it wants the man to lean his weight against the music until the sound tilts. But the man wanders inside the piano like someone looking for an elevator in a drafty building or like a drunk who can't find his way in a song he keeps repeating. The piano wants to play leaky faucets and water running all night in the toilets of a train station. It wants to play obscenities and the delicate moths that scratch their bellies on the ballroom screens. The piano wants to scratch. It wants to spit on the pavement. It wants to look into stores where women try on clothes and open their thighs to the mirrors. The piano wants to be a fat woman. It wants to play baggy and flab and carry tuna sandwiches to work in brown paper. It wants to dress up in sequins and eat fried fish. It wants to suck its fingers and flick ashes into the ocean. And it wants to squeeze into a single note, a silvery tube, and hold its breath. The piano tells the man to forget everything he ever learned and play the music boys pass in secret from desk to desk at school, the blue saliva of their kisses. The man feels left out of this music and thinks of going for cigarettes. The piano wants to drink up the butts littering the ballroom. It wants to sit down on the dance floor and sob with joy, it wants to rub all memory of celebration from the man's fingers. The piano wants to blow its nose in the music and play the silence of the room and the rain falling outside. It wants to play the pores in the man's face and his chapped hands. The piano wants the man to dance in his sports shirt and floppy pants. It wants him to ride up and down the hotel elevators and follow women back to their rooms. It wants him to pull roses from their hair and mice and light up like an arcade. The piano is sick and tired of this man's hands which sit down on their grief, as on a jetty, and count the stars. The piano doesn't care about hard times. It wants to stay up all night and tell unrepeatable stories to the ocean. It wants a sound to come from this man's mouth, even though his teeth are picked clean. The man won't know the sound when he makes it. He'll think a woman is kissing Kleenex. He'll think it's 4 A.M. and he can't buy a pack of anything anywhere. --Susan Mitchell
• Original "matters" link broken - try this